Since approximately 1994 the practice of globally conducting remote commerce through the use of secure electronic channels has evolved into an established business practice. Today this business practice is performed using a standard implementation that necessitates several technical requirements of the businesses wishing to facilitate these global remote transactions, as well of as the customers who wish to purchase products or services in this fashion. While there are many widely used tactics and accepted fundamentals to this established practice, the current implementation for conducting remote electronic commerce including technical delivery, purchasing and the status quo customer checkout process available to businesses and consumers lacks significant innovation and enhanced capability.
The sales process known as “one deal a day, daily deal, real time buying, flash shopping”, etc., through which consumers are notified of a special deal they may purchase online, has evolved over the past six years into a now well-established business practice. This recognized way of doing business typically focuses on one product at a time, discount retail items, services or special promotions that are offered in either a limited quantity or for a limited period of time. These special offers are typically made available for 24 hours or for a specified timeframe to incent competitive, viral and timely customer purchasing to capitalize on the significant savings or value.
Certain sites sell items uniquely through this method and provide varying offers amongst different geographic locations. Other established retailers, such as Buy.com and eBay.com feature an online “deal a day” item in addition to a more conventional sales method. This specific model originated on the internet with the launching of Woot.com in July 2004. By late 2006, it had exploded with more than 100 deal-a-day sites. Newer companies like Groupon, Homerun, Ideeli and many others continue to facilitate a broad range of offerings for online customers to participate and purchase products or services at a greatly reduced cost.
Operating under this model, deal-a-day customers must be aware of an offering, react quickly or sometimes impulsively to partake in these special offerings before the limited quantity or time fully expires. Sales and growth highly depends upon a certain type of consumer behavior that is expected to occur. Businesses that operate successfully within this realm understand the importance of dealing with the human psychology factors as well as the portrayal of perceived scarcity.
While there are many widely used tactics and accepted practices to this established business model, the current mechanics and implementation utilized for the technical promotion, delivery and status quo customer checkout process offered to consumers lacks significant innovation and enhanced consumer capability.
Amongst the hundreds of established companies incorporating this strategic business process, the applied method of delivery, promotion and purchasing of these offerings has been limited to conducting this type of business in an online fashion only. Each customer must actively engage the platform of their choice from within required parameters to receive, participate and purchase offers.
For example, buyers who currently wish to engage in these special offers must do so by utilizing an online internet connection, SSL and a device that supports both. The typical process requires that each customer connect to the internet, select a desired web address via the World Wide Web using a desktop computer, laptop computer, iPad, Tablet PC, W AP mobile application, etc.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a system and method for enabling global and remote flash sale or daily deal commerce through unsecured electronic channels and it is to this end that the disclosure is directed.